You're Never "Out of the Woods"

When you're pregnant, everyone tells you that once you're through the first trimester, you're in the clear, so to say. "Just get through the first trimester, and then you can start telling everyone you're pregnant", they say. But even once you reach that 12 week "promised land", you're still not out of the woods. In fact I feel like I'm lost in the woods, like I need to just set up camp and stay a while, because I'm not getting out any time soon.

The other day I had my 12 week sonogram, and I was so excited! I just recall from my first pregnancy how clear and amazing the sonogram was at that stage, and how moving it was to see my little boy waving to us and moving all around, looking like a real baby at only 12 weeks. But at the end of the appointment, the sonographer informed us that I had what's called a subchorionic bleed. My heart sank. What does that even mean? She couldn't really tell me much because she is not my doctor, and recommended that I speak with my doctor about it directly. So I called my doctor, but she was out of town until the end of the week. I ended up talking to the doctor covering for her, who reassured me that this does happen, and for the most part it is not something to worry about.

But of course I got online and tried doing my own research. Never do that, by the way. Because the only people who write on those message boards are the people with the doom and gloom stories. And doom and gloom is the last thing you need when you are pregnant and emotional. I did learn, however, that a subchorionic bleed (or subchorionic hematoma) is the accumulation of blood in the folds of the outer fetal membrane (next to the placenta), or within the placenta itself. It is usually caused during implantation. And it seems that there is really nothing you can do to prevent it, make it better, or make it go away completely. However, most often this condition resolves itself - you either bleed it out, or it gets reabsorbed by your body. But of course, in my frenetic search to learn as much as possible, I came across these message boards where woman after woman was writing about how she lost her beautiful baby at 20 weeks. It's just so sad because you can have a perfectly healthy little baby, but if the hematoma grows, it can separate the placenta from the uterine wall, causing a miscarriage. It does seem that this is pretty rare, but still not the thing you want to be reading when your emotions are teetering on the edge of reason.

And at the present moment, I have not had the opportunity to speak with my doctor, and won't be able to until some time next week. So until I can speak with her about my exact sonogram, and the likelihood of this condition getting better, worse, staying the same, etc., it's hard to feel any better about it.

Will I ever be out of the woods? Or will I just feel lost for the next 6 months, hoping someone gives me a compass, so that I can emerge from the other side victorious, and not lose what I fear losing most.

Summertime Blues

The official "last day of summer" has always been Labor Day, has it not? Growing up, I always thought of summer as that time between the last day of school and Labor Day. But apparently that has changed...summer seems to be getting shorter and shorter as I get older and older.

Yesterday I was on a search for a beach umbrella - just a simple umbrella, nothing fancy. I am going to Cape Cod with my family next week, and thought it would be nice to not fry my child like an egg under the hot sun. So I went to 6 different stores yesterday, and not one of them had a single beach umbrella. They all said the same thing: "We are sold out, and will not sell anymore this summer". In fact the gentleman at Target informed me that the "Summer" area was now the "Back to School" area. What??? Are you kidding me?! "It's only August 9th", I replied. Don't you people know that there are still exactly 28 days of summer left? And that some of us still take vacations between now and then?

God forbid a parent should want to protect themselves and their children from the harmful rays of the sun after August 1st. Apparently those of us who take vacations in August are the second class citizens of the sun-fearing world. Sure you might be able to find a container or two of sunblock - by the way, only SPF 4 and SPF 70+ are left on the shelves, so you can choose to come home from your vacation either red as a lobster or pale as a ghost...your choice! But if you want to sit in the shade, you better sit close to a lifeguard stand, because that's about as close as you are going to come to relief from the sun, unless of course you just wait until next year, and buy your beach umbrella in April!!

Are dogs and babies the same?

It is a widely regarded assumption that having a dog prepares you for having a child. People often say that it is actually harder to have a dog. Well, I have had a dog, and I now have a child, so I am here to provide you with the ways in which have a dog and having a child are similar....but also to shed some light on how they are completely different.

Top 5 Ways Caring for a Dog is similar to caring for a Child:
1. Both require a lot of love and attention....and discipline.
2. Both are the hardest to care for when they are brand new babies, and then get easier as they mature.
3. Both require potty training.
4. Both rely on you for food, water, and shelter.
5. Both change your life completely.

Top 10 ways Caring for a Child is completely different that caring for a Dog:
1. You can't leave home without your child.
2. In that same vein, you would never go to work for 8 hours and leave your child at home unattended.
3. Although some seem to think this is ok, you can't put your child on a leash.
4. You can't "crate train" a child.
5. You can't put your child under the seat in front of you on an airplane and let them just snuggle at your feet for a 6 hour flight.
6. Dogs never talk back.
7. Dogs don't go to college, and take all your money with them.
8. Dogs reach maturity by the age of 2. For children....it's usually at least 25.
9. You wouldn't board your child for 10 days with someone you had never met, while you went on vacation to Europe.
10. If it doesn't work out, you can always give a dog away to someone with a farm in upstate New York. That doesn't go over so well with children.

Music Class

We all want to do the right thing for our children, right? We involve them in playgroups and maybe daycare or pre-school, all with the hope that it will mold them into well-socialized little people. And music class is one of those activities that is supposed to be so good for them, help with their cognitive development, etc. So we sign our kids up (sometimes as young as 6 months) thinking, "This class is going to make my child a musical genius!!"

Then there is my child who, at every opportunity, will get up in the middle of music class and walk into the other room. Somehow the strollers and bathroom in the room next door hold much more appeal for him than the energetic music teacher leading the class right in front of him. So I am left there, by myself, singing, and clapping my hands, and gesturing wildly to the beat of music that I stopped listening to three decades ago, while my son is playing "steal the snack" out of the closest stroller he can find. So I find myself wondering, "Is he actually absorbing anything in this class? Why am I spending good money on a class for my son, when I am the only one participating?"

But despite all that, I will say that after his first semester there, when I had pretty much decided that we were not going back, he one day started singing one of the songs from the class. At 19 months he doesn't say much, but when he started singing that song, he had me hooked. That very same day I signed up for another semester.

Who knows, maybe my son will be the next Tommy Lee. But I kind of hope not.

The Inadvertently Bad Mom

Have you ever found yourself in situations where you look like a terrible mother, through no fault of your own? This happened to me on two occasions in the last week, and I'm feeling bad about it for reasons I can't explain.

My son is learning how to say the word "firetruck". Now either he is lazy and is trying to reduce the number of syllables he needs to utter in a single breath, or he simply can't say the two words together. My theory is the latter, coupled with the fact that my husband and I laugh uncontrollably every time he tries to say it. But somehow "firetruck" has been shortened to "f'uck". And because my husband and I laugh every time he says it, he just says it over and over again: "f'uck", f'uck, f'uck!" like it's the most natural and normal thing he could possibly say. We had the cable guy at our apartment the other day, and while he was minding his own business, fixing our cable, my son was playing with his firetruck, and....you guessed it....he starts yelling "f'uck, f'cuck, f'uck!" To which I promptly replied, "No, sweetie, it's 'firetruck'", trying to somehow tell this stranger, who I will likely never see again, that in my spare time I have not been teaching my child every swear word in the book. Ugh!

And just two days later, my husband and I took our son to the public pool. Prior to leaving, like any good parent, I lathered my son with sunscreen. But, of course, no sunblock applying session is complete without the token toddler meltdown that comes with it. So, needless to say, applying the sunscreen to my son's face was no easy task, and resulted in my getting about half of the sunscreen meant for his face, in his eyes. So we get to the pool, and by now he has been rubbing his eyes for a good 10 minutes, so they are red and puffy and watery - kind of resembling pink eye - the LAST thing the other parents want their children exposed to in that environment. And for some unknown reason, his nose spontaneously started running too. So we're there literally begging our son to "have a good time!", and he is completely miserable, rubbing his eyes and slobbering all over himself, us, and the kiddy pool we so desperately wanted him to enjoy. And I definitely caught a few looks from other parents, as if to say, "How could you knowingly bring your child to a public pool when he is clearly so sick!?" I felt like I needed to wear a sign across my bathing suit-clad chest that read "Nothing to be alarmed about folks. It's just a little sunblock!"

So to all you moms out there who have experienced this, I salute you. All we can do is try our best, and just know that sometimes along the way, despite all our efforts, we will still end up looking like an "ass'hole" every once and while.

R.I.P. My Social Life

I remember the days when I could go to a party and talk to everyone I wanted to, for as long as I wanted to (sometimes for longer than I wanted to). But nonetheless there was an element of control there that no longer exists...I had some control over my social life.

This past weekend my husband, son, and I attended an engagement party for my cousin. This was one of the first events we've attended with him since he has been "on the move" - which makes me sound ultra-pathetic, because at 18 months, he has now been walking for about 7 months. But anyway, we all go to this party, and in some ways I felt like we were just playing with him in a different location, rather than spending any real amount of time catching up with, or talking to, our relatives. I got to talk to some family for a few minutes at a time - most of whom probably thought I had ADD - my eyes darting back and forth between them and my son, as he ran across the yard, baby stroller in tow. And of course the only way you can actually have an uninterrupted conversation with anyone is to do the "tradeoff" - my husband watches my son while I have normal, adult conversation, and then 15 minutes later (which, by the way, only feels like about 30 seconds when you are so desperate to cram in as much intellectually stimulating, non baby-talk fodder as possible), we tradeoff, and I take over baby monitoring duties. This, of course, ultimately leads to not spending any time with my husband at the party.

By the end of the party, I found myself apologizing to my family, saying things like "I'm so sorry we didn't get to catch up more - I was running around after Jack the whole time". They completely understood, but I can tell all of my cousins without children are thinking, "Oh boy, do we really want kids yet? Let's wait a few more years."

And to them I say, "Well, you're never really ready". You never have enough money, enough time, enough resources. But despite the fact that my social life is in purgatory right now, and probably won't emerge until my last child's 18th birthday, that is a "tradeoff" I am willing to make.

Mommy Brain

I used to be so organized and on top of things. In my former life, when I worked in hotels, I was so insanely busy, but somehow I never forgot an appointment, a follow-up, or a meeting. But these days, I am lucky if I even remember my own name. How does that happen, you ask? It's a little thing that I (and most other mothers out there) like to call "Mommy Brain".

Now Mommy Brain is a very real, medically founded thing, at least when you are pregnant. During that time, there is so much blood going to the growing baby, that there is precious little left to power the mommy's brain. I experienced this all the time when I was pregnant with my son. But after the baby is born?? To my knowledge there is no medical research that has proven that Mommy Brain continues after your child is born, but somehow I am still brain dead. And personally I like blaming any and all situations where I have acted dumbly (yes, I said "dumbly" - I don't even know if that's a word, but my spellcheck didn't pick it up so I'm going with it....but I digress) on my aforementioned Mommy Brain.

Somehow I always manage to forget something. Today, for instance, my plan was to drop my son off at daycare, and then go to gym. After that I needed to run to the post office to mail out 3 copies of a contract for a business related transaction. Prior to leaving, I took the time to really make sure I had everything: iPod, water bottle, keys, wallet, stamps to mail the contracts, etc. But the contracts themselves? Apparently that alluded me, because somehow I managed to only pick up two out of the three contracts prior to walking out the door. How does one forget a contract when all three are sitting in a nice, neat pile on their counter?? I don't know. My only excuse is Mommy Brain.

I also like to think that I love my son so much, and am so focused on caring for, loving, and nurturing him, and that all other "trivial" matters seem to go out the window. That's a tradeoff I don't mind, if you ask me. Someday, when I am old and my mind really goes, I will have raised a son who will hopefully return the favor.